From Ulster Magazine: Life After Levon

Thursday

Apr 18, 2013 at 2:00 AM

Following the death of Levon Helm, Times Herald-Record reporter Steve Israel wrote this piece on Woodstock and Ulster County's reaction. Israel had covered Helm for years, attending Midnight Rambles and wrote extensively about Helm's many late-life successes. Here is Israel's story from the May-June 2012 Ulster Magazine.

By Steve Israel

Following the death of Levon Helm, Times Herald-Record reporter Steve Israel wrote this piece on Woodstock and Ulster County's reaction. Israel had covered Helm for years, attending Midnight Rambles and wrote extensively about Helm's many late-life successes. Here is Israel's story from the May-June 2012 Ulster Magazine.

Once upon a time, nearly a half century ago, the Town of Woodstock literally rocked the world.

Walk into a Tinker Street spot such as the Joyous Lake or the Espresso Cafe, where Bob Dylan lived upstairs, and you'd see stars such as Dylan, John Sebastian, Paul Butterfield and Joan Baez hanging out or jamming. Stop into the hardware store and you'd see those same stars picking up a newspaper or buying nails.

Music was such a vital strand of the fabric of Woodstock, and Ulster County, that Levon Helm and the guys from the Band would show up to serenade a friend outside his house in this town where you might see Jimi Hendrix strolling down Tinker. Tucked amidst the forests, fields, mountains and streams of Ulster were studios such as Bearsville or NRS, where many of those musicians recorded.

“It was the character of this town, such a big contribution of what made this community so different than anywhere else,” says guitarist Larry Campbell of Bearsville, who discovered Woodstock when he played the Joyous Lake with the Woodstock Mountain Revue in the 1970s and went on to play guitar for Dylan, and, most recently, Helm, among many others.

But by the '90s, as the Joyous Lake and Espresso closed or changed hands, much of that big-time scene faded away.

Levon Helm, who died April 19, 2012, resurrected it. For the past eight years he hosted his weekly Midnight Rambles, which drew such stars as Elvis Costello, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and the Black Crowes to his home/studio, where Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, the Band's Garth Hudson and Sebastian were often inconspicuous members of Helm's band, led by Campbell.

So many musicians and fans flocked to the wood-beamed room with bluestone walls that Woodstock's Steve Earle called it a national institution.

“Having a Ramble in a place you live is like having the Alamo in San Antonio,” he says.

Jimmy Vivino, who often played the Rambles and now leads Conan O'Brien's television band, called the Rambles “the center of the musical universe.”

“This town used to be all about music, but it sort of got regulated out,” says Campbell about Woodstock. “This (the Rambles) was the last safe area to play all that music. The Rambles re-created that scene, where musicians would come and hang, and so would the audience.”

The Midnight Rambles may have been Helm's most visible contribution to Ulster County, drawing thousands to Woodstock, which had been renowned for the concert it didn't host. But as those Rambles gained steam – and Helm's voice gained strength after his bout with cancer – he became a potent force in Ulster County. His influence on countless aspects of everyday life was as pronounced as his rock-solid drumming downbeats that anchored tunes such as “The Weight and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

He raised thousands of dollars for needy schoolchildren and struggling farmers. He and his Rambles generated tens of thousands more by bringing customers to bed-and-breakfasts, restaurants and shops. Helm even became the smiling symbol and earthen voice of Ulster when he filmed its promotional video, for free, of course.

“He was a national treasure right in our backyard, the voice of a generation,” says Ulster County Executive Mike Hein. “But he was just as likely to show up for a local benefit.”

When the children at Woodstock Elementary School faced cuts in their arts programs, Helm stepped up. He may have just gone through bankruptcy proceedings, but there he was at a Ramble handing over a check for $10,000 to Woodstock Elementary School Principal Bobbi Schnell.

“I was bowing down to him and he was standing there with the biggest smile, as if we did something for him, and he just did it for us,” says Schnell. “He gave so much of himself, and it was unconditional. He was all about the community.”

“A mensch” is how she describes Helm, who may have played places like the Hollywood Bowl and the Beacon Theater, but also brought his band to the Onteora High School auditorium to raise some $5,000 for the school's music program, which was hurting so badly band members had to patch their instruments.

“But that's what he did,” says farmer John Gill, one of the many “regular guy” buddies of Helm, who grew up picking cotton and driving tractors on his father's farm in Turkey Scratch, Ark., and never lost sight of those roots.

Helm often played benefits – for free – on Gill's farm in Hurley, where he would then stop by to shoot the breeze about the challenges of farming, just as he'd stop by Woodstock Automotive, says the shop's owner Mike Anello, who worked on Helm's old Saab.

But it wasn't only the benefits he volunteered to play or video he filmed that made Helm such a beloved force in Ulster.

The thousands of fans who came to his Rambles and local concerts meant tens of thousands of dollars for the shops and businesses of Woodstock, ranging from the bed-and-breakfasts that rented rooms to his fans to the Mount Tremper bus company, Tonche Transit, that rented buses to carry Helm and his band to area concerts.

“He did amazing things for the commerce of Woodstock,” says Shari Weingarten of the Twin Gables Bed and Breakfast.

Winters usually mean empty rooms at the Twin Gables, she says. But when Helm started his Rambles about eight years ago, the 10 rooms at the bed-and-breakfast, which rent for $89-$189, began filling up.

“He kept us going,” says Weingarten. “Whenever there was a Ramble, we filled up” with fans who came from as far away as California.

And of course those Rambles-goers – often middle-aged, with at least $100 each to spend on the concert – went out to dinner and shopped in town. One of their favorite restaurants was one of the closest to Helm's home: Cucina, a choice of Helm's wife, Sandy, John Sebastian and others.

Woodstock Chamber of Commerce president Nick Altomare agrees.

“We got calls from all over the world from people wanting places to stay, to eat when they came to the Rambles,” he says.

“His customers were my customers,” adds David Freeman of Changes men's clothing store, where Helm's daughter, Amy, often shopped for her dad's “simple, tasteful” clothes. “On Saturdays before the Rambles they'd shop, and on Sundays after the Rambles they'd shop. Everybody in town is feeling the loss.”

“It's like when you drop a stitch in knitting,” explains Susan Bissonnette of Woodstock. “It's like there's a little hole in the town.”

That “hole” isn't just because of all that Helm did for Ulster County. It's because of who he was: a world-famous musician who shared the stage with Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Eric Clapton, but who gave so much of himself to the schoolchildren, farmers and shop owners who were his neighbors.

In fact, Helm and Amy often went to the oncology department of Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital, where he had been treated and where he died, to play for the patients. And then Helm would say how thankful he was to do it.

“We would have these talks about how lucky we are to be able to use music as a healing thing,” says Campbell, who joined Helm on a few of those visits.

That's why Campbell and so many other folks connected with the Rambles vow to fill the empty space created by the loss of Levon Helm and his Midnight Rambles.

“Everywhere I go, people are asking how they can help keep it going,” Campbell says. “We're optimistic that we can; we just have to figure out how to do it without Levon.”